Underline Gallery: record your memory

As part of my show at Underline Gallery I installed a sound booth where visitors can record their own stories, memories, etc. Below are more details:

underlinegallery:

Memorial Day marks a moment of remembrance, reflection, and contemplation, forcing us to reconsider our national histories and reevaluate the relationship of our country’s present to its past; we revisit graves and decorate monuments to commemorate fallen soldiers, all the while meditating upon the military annals of our nation. The holiday not only commemorates our precedents, but foments our need to remember, to preserve, and immortalize the past within the present, to fix the ephemerality of life within a concrete object, be it tombstone, shrine, monument, or work of art; we are forever struggling to uphold memories within something tangible that we know will last.

But what is the significance of such memorializing endeavors when so few of them are, in fact, eternal? In his subtle reflections upon personal and national histories, Jordan Sullivan interrogates the meaning of memory, on the individual as well as the collective level. Although each individual’s memories are disparate, we share a similar need to reflect upon our pasts and preserve them within the here and now.

In conjunction with the exhibition “Natural History,” UNDERLINE Gallery and Jordan Sullivan invite you to record your own significant memory in a two-minute audio file. This interactive project, like many other works in the exhibition, focuses upon the pervasive quality of memory and the collective desire to memorialize the past. Select recordings will be aired on New York City’s WFMU on May 25^th for Memorial Day and published in a limited edition Deluxe CD Box Set created by the artist and available for sale at the gallery. The Box Set, titled “Memory Box,” will include a CD of the recordings, an original print or collage, and other objects by Sullivan. (Order your Box Set through info@underlinegallery.com; $70).

For this project, Sullivan has set up a recording booth within the gallery space, where visitors are encouraged to reflect upon their pasts by recording a personal recollection. If you cannot come into the gallery, but are interested in participating in the project, you can create an audio clip on your own and email it to Underline Gallery at info@underlinegallery.com. Record your memory as a voice memo on your iPhone, as an audio file on GarageBand, or as a document on Audacity. 

When finished, save your file with your first and last name in the title and send it to the gallery.